Title : Lucy Steele, The Mistress of Sense and Sensibility, in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

Author(s) : Choedphong Uttama

Pages : 1-16

Abstract in English : This paper interprets Jane Austen’s Sense
and Sensibility (1811) in the context of the
literary and social debate about “sense”
and “sensibility” in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century when the
concept of sense was viewed with a
suspicious eye as it might lead sensible
persons to machination and manipulation;
and, sensibility with a disapproving one as
such it had been throughout the tradition
of the anti-sentimental novel. This paper
thus aims to argue that the portrayal of a
female antagonist Lucy Steele who unites
assumed sensibility and prudent, selfserving
sense to achieve her ambitious
aims shows that the novel was responsive
to the belief promoted by the antisentimental
works that sensibility could be
feigned and used to dupe others and at the
time rejected the idea that (too much)
sense is a desirable quality.